Chapter III: his first important piece of original research--and

had in consequence a serious misunderstanding with Dr. Wollaston. On September 3rd, working with George Barnard in the laboratory, he saw the electric wire for the first time revolve around the pole of the magnet. Rubbing his hands as he danced around the table with beaming face, he exclaimed: “There they go! there they go! we have succeeded at last.” Then he gleefully proposed that they should wind up the day by going to one of the theatres. Which should it be? “Oh, to Astley’s, to see the horses.” And to Astley’s they went. On Christmas Day he called his young wife to see something new: an electric conducting-wire revolving under the influence of the magnetism of the earth alone. He also read two chemical papers at the Royal Society, announcing new discoveries; one of them in conjunction with his friend Phillips. In July, 1822, he took his wife and her mother to Ramsgate, whilst he went off with Phillips to Swansea to try a new process in Vivian’s copper works. During this enforced parting, Faraday wrote his wife three letters from which the following are extracts:---

[Sidenote: “A MERE LOVE-LETTER.”]

(July 21, 1822).

I perceive that if I give way to my thoughts, I shall write you
a mere love-letter, just as usual, with not a particle of news
in it: to prevent which I will constrain myself to a narrative
of what has happened since I left you up to the present time,
and then indulge my affection.

Yesterday was a day of events--little, but pleasant. I went in
the morning to the Institution, and in the course of the day
analysed the water, and sent an account of it to Mr. Hatchett.
Mr. Fisher I did not see. Mr. Lawrence called in, and behaved
with his usual generosity. He had called in the early part of
the week, and, finding that I should be at the Institution on
Saturday only, came up, as I have already said, and insisted
on my accepting two ten-pound bank-notes for the information
he professed to have obtained from me at various times. Is not
this handsome? The money, as you know, could not have been at
any time more acceptable; and I cannot see any reason, my dear
love, why you and I should not regard it as another proof,
among many, that our trust should without a moment’s reserve be
freely reposed on Him who provideth all things for His people.
Have we not many times been reproached, by such mercies as
these, for our caring after food and raiment and the things
of this world? On coming home in the evening, _i.e._, coming
to Paternoster Row home, I learned that Mr. Phillips had seen
C., and had told her we should not leave London until Monday
evening. So I shall have to-morrow to get things ready in,
and I shall have enough to do. I fancy we are going to a large
mansion and into high company, so I must take more clothes.
Having the £20, I am become bold....

And now, how do my dear wife and mother do? Are you
comfortable? are you happy? are the lodgings convenient, and
Mrs. O. obliging? Has the place done you good? Is the weather
fine? Tell me all things as soon as you can. I think if you
write directly you get this it will be best, but let it be a
long letter. I do not know when I wished so much for a long
letter as I do from you now. You will get this on Tuesday, and
any letter from you to me cannot reach Swansea before Thursday
or Friday--a sad long time to wait. Direct to me, Post Office,
Swansea; or perhaps better, to me at -- Vivian Esq., Marino,
near Swansea, South Wales....

And now, my dear girl, I must set business aside. I am tired
of the dull detail of things, and want to talk of love to you;
and surely there can be no circumstances under which I can have
more right. The theme was a cheerful and delightful one before
we were married, but it is doubly so now. I now can speak, not
of my own heart only, but of both our hearts. I now speak, not
with any doubt of the state of your thoughts, but with the
fullest conviction that they answer to my own. All that I can
now say warm and animated to you, I know that you would say to
me again. The excess of pleasure which I feel in knowing you
mine is doubled by the consciousness that you feel equal joy in
knowing me yours.

[Sidenote: FROM HUSBAND TO WIFE.]

Marino: Sunday, July 28, 1822.

MY DEARLY BELOVED WIFE,--I have just read your letter again,
preparatory to my writing to you, that my thoughts might be
still more elevated and quickened than before. I could almost
rejoice at my absence from you, if it were only that it has
produced such an earnest and warm mark of affection from you
as that letter. Tears of joy and delight fell from my eyes on
its perusal. I think it was last Sunday evening, about this
time, that I wrote to you from London; and I again resort to
this affectionate conversation with you, to tell you what has
happened since the letter which I got franked from this place
to you on Thursday I believe.

* * * * *

We have been working very hard here at the copper works, and
with some success. Our days have gone on just as before. A walk
before breakfast; then breakfast; then to the works till four
or five o’clock, and then home to dress, and dinner. After
dinner, tea and conversation. I have felt doubly at a loss
to-day, being absent from both the meeting and you. When away
from London before, I have had you with me, and we could read
and talk and walk; to-day I have had no one to fill your place,
so I will tell you how I have done. There are so many here, and
their dinner so late and long, that I made up my mind to avoid
it, though, if possible, without appearing singular. So, having
remained in my room till breakfast time, we all breakfasted
together, and soon after Mr. Phillips and myself took a walk
out to the Mumbles Point, at the extremity of this side of
the bay. There we sat down to admire the beautiful scenery
around us, and, after we had viewed it long enough, returned
slowly home. We stopped at a little village in our way, called
Oystermouth, and dined at a small, neat, homely house about
one o’clock. We then came back to Marino, and after a little
while again went out--Mr. Phillips to a relation in the town,
and myself for a walk on the sands and the edge of the bay. I
took tea in a little cottage, and, returning home about seven
o’clock, found them engaged at dinner, so came up to my own
room, and shall not see them again to-night. I went down for a
light just now, and heard them playing some sacred music in the
drawing-room; they have all been to church to-day, and are what
are called regular people.

The trial at Hereford is put off for the present, but yet we
shall not be able to be in town before the end of this week.
Though I long to see you, I do not know when it will be;
but this I know, that I am getting daily more anxious about
you. Mr. Phillips wrote home to Mrs. Phillips from here even
before I did--_i.e._ last Wednesday. This morning he received
a letter from Mrs. Phillips (who is very well) desiring him
to ask me for a copy of one of my letters to you, that he may
learn to write love-letters of sufficient length. He laughs at
the scolding, and says that it does not hurt at a distance....

It seems to me so long since I left you that there must have
been time for a great many things to have happened. I expect to
see you with such joy when I come home that I shall hardly know
what to do with myself. I hope you will be well and blooming,
and animated and happy, when you see me. I do not know how we
shall contrive to get away from here. We certainly shall not
have concluded before Thursday evening, but I think we shall
endeavour earnestly to leave this place on Friday night, in
which case we shall get home late on Saturday night. If we
cannot do that, as I should not like to be travelling all day
on Sunday, we shall probably not leave until Sunday night; but
I think the first plan will be adopted, and that you will not
have time to answer this letter. I expect, nevertheless, an
answer to my last letter--_i.e._ I expect that my dear wife
will think of me again. Expect here means nothing more than
I trust and have a full confidence that it will be so. My
kind girl is so affectionate that she would not think a dozen
letters too much for me if there were time to send them, which
I am glad there is not.

Give my love to our mothers as earnestly as you would your own,
and also to Charlotte or John, or any such one that you may
have with you. I have not written to Paternoster Row yet, but
I am going to write now, so that I may be permitted to finish
this letter here. I do not feel quite sure, indeed, that the
permission to leave off is not as necessary from my own heart
as from yours.

With the utmost affection--with perhaps too much--I am, my dear
wife, my Sarah, your devoted husband,

M. FARADAY.

Faraday’s next scientific success was the liquefaction of chlorine (see Chapter III., p. 93). This discovery, which created much interest in the scientific world, was the occasion of a serious trouble with Sir Humphry Davy; for doubtless Davy was annoyed that he had left such a simple experiment to a mere assistant. Writing on the matter years after, Faraday said:--

When my paper was written, it was, according to a custom
consequent upon our relative positions, submitted to Sir
H. Davy (as were all my papers for the “Philosophical
Transactions” up to a much later period), and he altered it as
he thought fit. This practice was one of great kindness to me,
for various grammatical mistakes and awkward expressions were
from time to time thus removed, which might else have remained.

In point of fact, Davy on this occasion added a note (which was duly printed) saying precisely how far he had any share in suggesting the experiment, but in no wise traversing any of Faraday’s claims. Although he thus acted generously to the latter, there can be no question that he began to be seriously jealous of Faraday’s rising fame. The matter was the more serious because some who did not have a nice appreciation of the circumstances chose to rake up a charge which had been raised two years before against Faraday by some of Dr. Wollaston’s friends--in particular by Dr. Warburton--about the discovery of the electro-magnetic rotations, a charge which Faraday’s straightforward action and Wollaston’s frank satisfaction ought to have dissipated for ever. And all this was doubly aggravating because Faraday was now expecting to be proposed as a candidate for the Fellowship of the Royal Society, of which Sir Humphry was President.

[Sidenote: PROPOSED FOR THE FELLOWSHIP.]

At that time, as now, the proposal paper or “certificate” of a candidate for election must be presented, signed by a number of influential Fellows. Faraday’s friend Phillips took in hand the pleasant task of drawing up this certificate and of collecting the necessary signatures. The rule then was that the certificate so presented must be read out at ten successive meetings of the Society; after which a ballot took place. Faraday’s certificate bears twenty-nine names. The very first is that of Wollaston, and it is followed by those of Children, Babington, Sir John Herschel, Babbage, Phillips, Roget, and Sir James South.

On the 5th of May, 1823, Faraday wrote to Phillips:--

A thousand thanks to you for your kindness--I am delighted with
the names--Mr. Brande had told me of it before I got your note
and thought it impossible to be better. I suppose you will not
be in Grosvenor Street this Evening, so I will put this in the
post.

Our Best remembrances to Mrs. Phillips.

Yours Ever,
M. FARADAY.

The certificate was read for the first time on May 1st. The absence of the names of Davy and Brande is accounted for by the one being President and the other Secretary. Bence Jones gives the following account of what followed:--

That Sir H. Davy actively opposed Faraday’s election is no less
certain than it is sad.

Many years ago, Faraday gave a friend the following facts,
which were written down immediately:--“Sir H. Davy told me I
must take down my certificate. I replied that I had not put
it up; that I could not take it down, as it was put up by my
proposers. He then said I must get my proposers to take it
down. I answered that I knew they would not do so. Then he
said, I as President will take it down. I replied that I was
sure Sir H. Davy would do what he thought was for the good of
the Royal Society.”

Faraday also said that one of his proposers told him that Sir
H. Davy had walked for an hour round the courtyard of Somerset
House, arguing that Faraday ought not to be elected. This was
probably about May 30.

Faraday also made the following notes on the circumstance of the charge made by Wollaston’s friends:--

1823. _In relation to Davy’s opposition to my election at the
Royal Society._

Sir H. Davy angry, May 30.

Phillips’ report through Mr. Children, June 5.

Mr. Warburton called first time, June 5 (evening).

I called on Dr. Wollaston, and he not in town, June 9.

I called on Dr. Wollaston, and saw him, June 14.

I called at Sir H. Davy’s, and he called on me, June 17.

On July 8 Dr. Warburton wrote that he was satisfied with Faraday’s explanation, and added that he would tell his friends that “my objections to you as a Fellow are and ought to be withdrawn, and that I now wish to forward your election.”

Bence Jones adds:--

On June 29, Sir H. Davy ends a note, “I am, dear Faraday, very
sincerely your well wisher and friend.” So that outwardly the
storm rapidly passed away; and when the ballot was taken, after
the certificate had been read at ten meetings, there was only
one black ball.

[Sidenote: FELLOWSHIP AND MAGNANIMITY.]

The election took place January 8, 1824.

Of this unfortunate misunderstanding,[11] Davy’s biographer, Dr. Thorpe, writes:--

The jealousy thus manifested by Davy is one of the most pitiful
facts in his history. It was a sign of that moral weakness
which was at the bottom of much of his unpopularity, and which
revealed itself in various ways as his physical strength
decayed....

Faraday allowed himself in after days no shade of resentment against Davy; though he confessed rather sadly that after his election as F.R.S. his relations with his former master were never the same as before. If anyone recurred to the old scandal, he would fire with indignation. Dumas in his “Éloge Historique” has given the following anecdote:--

Faraday never forgot what he owed to Davy. Visiting him at the
family lunch, twenty years after the death of the latter, he
noticed evidently that I responded with some coolness to the
praises which the recollection of Davy’s great discoveries had
evoked from him. He made no comment. But, after the meal, he
simply took me down to the library of the Royal Institution,
and stopping before the portrait of Davy he said: “He was a
great man, wasn’t he?” Then, turning round, he added, “It was
here[12] that he spoke to me for the first time.” I bowed. We
went down to the laboratory. Faraday took out a note-book,
opened it and pointed out with his finger the words written
by Davy, at the very moment when by means of the battery he
had just decomposed potash, and had seen the first globule of
potassium ever isolated by the hand of man. Davy had traced
with a feverish hand a circle which separates them from the
rest of the page: the words, “Capital Experiment,” which
he wrote below, cannot be read without emotion by any true
chemist. I confessed myself conquered, and this time, without
hesitating longer, I joined in the admiration of my good friend.

Dr. Thorpe in his life of Davy adds:--

... To the end of his days he [Faraday] regarded Davy as his
true master, preserving to the last, in spite of his knowledge
of the moral frailties of Davy’s nature, the respect and even
reverence which is to be seen in his early lecture notes and in
his letters to his friend Abbott.

In 1823 the Athenæum Club was started by J. Wilson Croker, Sir H. Davy, Sir T. Lawrence, Sir F. Chantrey, and others, as a resort for literary and scientific men. Faraday was made Club Secretary; but he found the duties totally uncongenial, and in 1824 resigned the post to his friend Magrath.

Faraday was advanced in 1825 to the position of Director of the Laboratory of the Royal Institution, Brande remaining Professor of Chemistry. One of the first acts of the new Director was to hold evening meetings of the members in the laboratory, when experiments were shown and some demonstration was given. There were three or four of these informal gatherings that year. In the next year these Friday evening meetings were held more systematically. There were seventeen during the season, at six of which Faraday gave discourses (see p. 100). In 1827 there were nineteen, of which he delivered three. By this time the gatherings were held in the theatre as at present, save that ladies were only admitted at that date, and for many years, to the upper gallery. He also originated the Christmas lectures to juveniles, while continuing to give regular courses of morning lectures, as his predecessors Young and Davy had done. His activity for the Royal Institution was incessant.

[Sidenote: FEES FOR PROFESSIONAL WORK.]

Down to the year 1830 Faraday continued to undertake, at professional fees, chemical analyses and expert work in the law-courts, and thereby added considerably to the very slender emolument of his position; but, finding this work to make increasing demands on his time, which he could ill spare from the absorbing pursuit of original researches, he decided to abandon a practice which would have made him rich, and withdrew from expert practice. The following letter to Phillips was written only a few weeks before this determination:--

[_M. Faraday to Richard Phillips._]

Royal Institution,
June 21, 1831.

MY DEAR PHILLIPS,--I have been trying hard to get time enough
to write to you by post to-night, but without success; the
bell has rung, and I am too late. However, I am resolved to
be ready to-morrow. We have been very anxious and rather
embarrassed in our minds about your anxiety to know how things
were proceeding, and uncertain whether reference to them
would be pleasant, and that has been the cause why I have
not written to you, for I did not know what character your
connexion with Badams had. I was a little the more embarrassed
because of my acquaintance with Mr. Rickard and his family,
and, of course with his brother-in-law, Dr. Urchell, of whom I
have made numerous enquiries to know what Mr. Rickard intended
doing at Birmingham. He (expressed a) hope it would be nothing
unpleasant to you, but was not sure. Our only bit of comfort in
the matter was on hearing from Daniell about you a little; he
was here to-day, and glad to hear of you through me. But now
that I may write, let me say that Mrs. Faraday has been very
anxious with myself, and begs me earnestly to remember her to
Mrs. Phillips. We have often wished we could have had you here
for an hour or two, to break off what we supposed might be the
train of thoughts at home.

With regard to the five guineas, do not think of it for a
moment. Whilst I supposed a mercantile concern wanted my
opinion for its own interested uses, I saw no reason why it
should not pay me; but it is altogether another matter when it
becomes _your affair_. I do not think you would have wished
_me_ to pay _you_ five guineas for anything you might have done
personally for me. “Dog don’t eat dog,” as Sir E. Home said to
me in a similar case. The affair is settled.

I have no doubt I shall be amused and, as you speak of new
facts, instructed by your letter to Dr. Reid, as I am by all
your letters. Daniell says he thinks you are breaking a fly
upon the wheel. You know I consider you as the Prince of
Chemical critics.

Pearsall has been working, as you know, on red manganese
solutions. He has not proved, but he makes out a strong
case for the opinion, that they owe their colour and other
properties to manganesic acid. This paper will be in the next
number of the Journal.

With regard to the gramme, wine-pint, etc., etc., in the
manipulation I had great trouble about them, for I could find
no agreement, and at last resolved to take certain conclusions
from Capt. Kater’s paper and the Act of Parliament, and
calculate the rest. I think I took the data at page 67,
paragraph 119, as the data, but am not sure, and cannot go over
them again.

My memory gets worse and worse daily. I will not, therefore,
say I have not received your Pharmacopœia--that of 1824 is what
I have at hand and use. I am not aware of any other. I have
sent a paper to the R. S., but not chemical. It is on sound,
etc., etc. If they print it, of course you will have a copy in
due time.

I am, my dear Phillips,
Most faithfully and sincerely yours,
M. FARADAY.

Is it right to ask what has become of Badams? I suppose he is,
of course, a defaulter at the R. S.

[Sidenote: SACRIFICES FOR SCIENCE.]

This sacrifice for science was not small. He had made £1,000 in 1830 out of these professional occupations, and in 1831 would have made more but for his own decision. In 1832 some Excise work that he had retained brought him in £155 9s.; but in no subsequent year did it bring in so much. He might easily have made £5,000 a year had he chosen to cultivate the professional connection thus formed; and as he continued, with little intermission, in activity till 1860, he might have died a wealthy man. But he chose otherwise; and his first reward came in the autumn of 1831, in the great discovery of magneto-electric currents--the principle upon which all our modern dynamos and transformers are based, the foundation of all the electric lighting and electric transmission of power. From this work he went on to a research on the identity of all the kinds of electricity, until then supposed to be of separate sorts, and from this to electro-chemical work of the very highest value. Of all these investigations some account will be found in the chapters which follow.

But the immense body of patient scientific work thus done for the love of science was not accomplished without sacrifices of a more than pecuniary kind. He withdrew more and more from society, declined to dine in company, ceased to give dinners, withdrew from all social and philanthropic organisations; even withdrew from taking any part in the management of any of the learned societies. The British Association for the Advancement of Science was started in 1831. Faraday took no part in that movement, and did not attend the inaugural meeting at York. The next year, however, he attended the second meeting of that body at Oxford. Here he “had the pleasure”--it is his own phrase--of making an experiment on the great magnet in the University museum, drawing a spark by induction in a coil of wire. This was a coil 220 feet long, wound on a hollow cylinder of pasteboard, which had been used in the classical experiments of the preceding year. He also showed that the induced currents could heat a thin wire connected to the terminals of this coil. These experiments, which were made in conjunction with Mr. (afterwards Sir William Snow) Harris, Professor Daniell, and Mr. Duncan, seem to have excited great attention at the time. The theologians of Oxford appear to have been mightily distressed both by the success of the spark experiment and by the welcome shown by the University to the representatives of science. The following passage from Pusey’s life[13] reveals the rampant clericalism which then and for a score of years sought to put back the clock of civilisation.

During the Long Vacation of 1832 Pusey had plenty of work on
hand. The British Association had held its first meeting in
Oxford during the month of June, and on the 21st the honorary
degree of D.C.L. was bestowed on four of its distinguished
members: Brewster, Faraday, Brown, and Dalton. Keble, who was
now Professor of Poetry, was angry at the “temper and tone of
the Oxford doctors”; they had “truckled sadly to the spirit of
the times” in receiving “the hodge-podge of philosophers” as
they did. Dr. L. Carpenter had assured Dr. Macbride that “the
University had prolonged her existence for a hundred years by
the kind reception he and his fellows had received.”

[Sidenote: THE HODGE-PODGE OF PHILOSOPHERS.]

It is not without significance, perhaps, that all the four men thus contemptuously labelled by Keble as the “hodge-podge of philosophers” were Dissenters. Brewster and Brown (the great botanist and discoverer of the “Brownian” motion of particles) belonged to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Dalton was a Member of the Society of Friends, and Faraday a Sandemanian. Newman appears to have been equally discomposed by the circumstance, for he got his friend Mr. Rose to write an article--a long and weary diatribe--against the British Association, which he inserted in the _British Critic_ for 1839. Its slanders, assumptions, suppressions, and suggestions are in a very unworthy temper.

Faraday’s devotion to the Royal Institution and its operations was marvellous. He had already abandoned outside professional work. From 1838 he refused to see any callers except three times a week. His extreme desire was to give himself uninterruptedly to research. His friend A. de la Rive says:--

Every morning Faraday went into his laboratory as the man of
business goes to his office, and then tried by experiment the
truth of the ideas which he had conceived overnight, as ready
to give them up if experiment said _no_ as to follow out the
consequences with rigorous logic if experiment answered _yes_.

He had in 1827 declined the appointment of Professor of Chemistry in the University (afterwards called University College) of London, giving as his reason the interests of the Royal Institution. He wrote:--

I think it a matter of duty and gratitude on my part to do
what I can for the good of the Royal Institution in the
present attempt to establish it firmly. The Institution has
been a source of knowledge and pleasure to me for the last
fourteen years; and though it does not pay me in salary what
I _now_ strive to do for it, yet I possess the kind feelings
and goodwill of its authorities and members, and all the
privileges it can grant or I require; and, moreover, I remember
the protection it has afforded me during the past years of
my scientific life. These circumstances, with the thorough
conviction that it is a useful and valuable establishment, and
the strong hopes that exertions will be followed with success,
have decided me in giving at least two years more to it, in the
belief that after that time it will proceed well, into whatever
hands it may pass.

In 1829, however, he was asked to become lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Academy at Woolwich. As this involved only twenty lectures a year he agreed, the salary being fixed at £200 a year. These lectures were continued until 1849.

[Sidenote: TRINITY HOUSE APPOINTMENT.]

In 1836 the whole course of his scientific work was changed by his appointment as scientific adviser to Trinity House, the body which has official charge of the lighthouse service in Great Britain. To the Deputy-master he wrote:--

I consider your letter to me as a great compliment, and should
view the appointment at the Trinity House, which you propose,
in the same light; but I may not accept even honours without
due consideration.

In the first place, my time is of great value to me; and if
the appointment you speak of involved anything like periodical
routine attendances, I do not think I could accept it. But
if it meant that in consultation, in the examination of
proposed plans and experiments, in trials, etc., made as
my convenience would allow, and with an honest sense of a
duty to be performed, then I think it would consist with my
present engagements. You have left the title and the sum in
pencil. These I look at mainly as regards the character of the
appointment; you will believe me to be sincere in this when you
remember my indifference to your proposition as a matter of
interest, though _not as a matter of kindness_.

In consequence of the goodwill and confidence of all around me,
I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not
require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary
purposes. The sum, therefore, of £200 is quite enough in
itself, but not if it is to be the indicator of the character
of the appointment; but I think you do not view it so, and
that you and I understand each other in that respect; and
your letter confirms me in that opinion. The position which I
presume you would wish me to hold is analogous to that of a
standing counsel.

As to the title, it might be what you pleased almost. Chemical
adviser is too narrow, for you would find me venturing into
parts of the philosophy of light not chemical. Scientific
adviser you may think too broad (or in me too presumptuous);
and so it would be, if by it was understood all science.

He held the post of scientific adviser for nearly thirty years. The records of his work are to be found in nineteen large portfolios full of manuscripts, all indexed with that minute and scrupulous attention to order and method which characterised all his work.

He also held nominally the post of scientific adviser to the Admiralty, at a salary of £200 a year. But this salary he never drew. Once the officials of the Admiralty requested his opinion upon a printed advertising pamphlet of somebody’s patent disinfecting powder and anti-miasma lamp. Faraday returned it, with a quietly indignant protest that it was not such a document as he could be expected to give an opinion upon.

Faraday’s hope, expressed in 1827, that in two years the Royal Institution might be restored to a financially sound position, was not realised. He worked with the most scrupulous economy, noting down every detail of expenditure even in farthings. “We were living on the parings of our own skin,” he once told the managers. In 1832 the financial question became acute. At the end of that year a committee of investigation reported as follows:--

The Committee are certainly of opinion that no reduction can be
made in Mr. Faraday’s salary--£100 per annum, house, coals, and
candles; and beg to express their regret that the circumstances
of the Institution are not such as to justify their proposing
such an increase of it as the variety of duties which Mr.
Faraday has to perform, and the zeal and ability with which he
performs them, appear to merit.

[Sidenote: A HUNDRED A YEAR, AND TWO ROOMS.]

A hundred a year, the use of two rooms, and coals! Such was the stipend of the man who had just before been made D.C.L. of Oxford, and had received from the Royal Society the highest award it can bestow--the Copley Medal! True, he made £200 by the Woolwich lectures; but he had a wife to maintain, his aged mother was entirely dependent upon him, and there were many calls upon his private exercise of charity.

About the year 1835 it was the intention of Sir Robert Peel to confer upon him a pension from the Civil List, but he went out of office before this could be arranged, and Lord Melbourne became Prime Minister. Sir James South had in March written to Lord Ashley, afterwards the well-known Earl of Shaftesbury, asking him to place a little historiette of Faraday in Sir Robert Peel’s hands. The said historiette[14] contained an account of Faraday’s early career and a description of the electrical machine which he had constructed as a lad. “Now that his pecuniary circumstances,” it went on, “were improved, he sent his younger sister to boarding-school, but to enable him to defray the expense, to deprive himself of dinner every other day was absolutely indispensable.” Peel expressed to Ashley lively regret at not having received the historiette earlier when he was still in office. To Ashley, later, he wrote the following hitherto unpublished letter:--

Drayton Manor,
May 3, 1835.

MY DEAR ASHLEY,--You do me but justice in entertaining the
belief that had I remained in office one of my earliest
recommendations to his Majesty would have been to grant a
pension to Mr. Faraday, on the same principles precisely upon
which one was granted to Mr. Airy. If there had been the means,
I would have made the offer before I left office.

I was quite aware of Mr. Faraday’s high eminence as a man of
science, and the valuable practical service he has rendered
to the public in that capacity; but I was to blame in not
having ascertained whether his pecuniary circumstances made an
addition to his income an object to him.

I am sure no man living has a better claim to such a
consideration from the State than he has, and I trust the
principle I acted on with regard to the award of civil
pensions will not only remove away impediments of delicacy
and independent feeling from the acceptance of them, but will
add a higher value to the grant of a pension as an honourable
distinction than any that it could derive from its pecuniary
amount.

Ever, my dear Ashley,
Most faithfully yours,
ROBERT PEEL.

[Sidenote: LORD MELBOURNE’S PARTICIPLE.]

Sir James South still endeavoured to bring about the grant thus deferred, and wrote to the Hon. Caroline Fox, asking her to put the historiette of Faraday in the hands of Lord Holland, for him to lay before Melbourne. Faraday at first demurred to Sir James South’s action, but on the advice of his father-in-law, Barnard, withdrew his demurrer. Later in the year he was asked to wait on Lord Melbourne at the Treasury. He has left a diary of the events of the day, October 26th. According to these notes it appears that Faraday first had a long talk with Melbourne’s secretary, Mr. Young, about his first demurring on religious grounds to accept the pension, about his objection to savings’ banks, and the laying-up of wealth. Later in the day he had a short interview with the First Lord of the Treasury, when Lord Melbourne, utterly mistaking the nature of the man before him, inveighed roundly upon the whole system of giving pensions to scientific and literary persons, which he described as a piece of humbug. He prefixed the word “humbug” with a participle which Faraday’s notes describe as “theological.” Faraday, with an instant flash of indignation, bowed and withdrew. The same evening he left his card and the following note at the Treasury:--

_To the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Melbourne, First Lord of the
Treasury._

October 26.

MY LORD,--The conversation with which your Lordship honoured
me this afternoon, including, as it did, your Lordship’s
opinion of the general character of the pensions given of late
to scientific persons, induces me respectfully to decline the
favour which I believe your Lordship intends for me; for I
feel that I could not, with satisfaction to myself, accept at
your Lordship’s hands that which, though it has the form of
approbation, is of the character which your Lordship so pithily
applied to it.

Faraday’s diary says:--

Did not like it much, and, on the whole, regret that friends
should have placed me in the situation in which I found myself.
Lord Melbourne said that “he thought there had been a great
deal of humbug in the whole affair. He did not mean my affair,
of course, but that of the pensions altogether.”... I begged
him to understand that I had known nothing of the matter until
far advanced, and, though grateful to those friends who had
urged it forward, wished him to feel at perfect liberty in the
affair as far as I was concerned.... In the evening I wrote and
left a letter. I left it myself at ten o’clock at night, being
anxious that Lord Melbourne should have it before anything
further was done in the affair.

[Sidenote: MICHAEL’S PENSION.]

However, the matter did not end here. Faraday’s friends were indignant. A caustic, and probably exaggerated, account--for which Faraday disclaimed all responsibility--of the interview appeared in _Fraser’s Magazine_, and was copied into _The Times_ of November 28th, with the result that, had it not been for the personal intervention of the King, the pension might have been refused. The storm, however, passed away, and the pension of £300 per annum was granted on December 24th. Years afterwards, writing to Mr. B. Bell, Faraday said, “Lord Melbourne behaved very handsomely in the matter.”

In _Fraser’s Magazine_ for February, 1836 (vol. xiii., p. 224), is a portrait of Faraday by Maclise, accompanied by a very amusing biographical notice by Dr. Maginn. The picture represents Faraday lecturing, and surrounded by his apparatus. The article begins thus:--

Here you have him in his glory--not that his position was
_inglorious_ when he stood before Melbourne, then decorated
with a blue velvet travelling cap, and lounging with one
leg over the chair of Canning!--and distinctly gave that
illustrious despiser of “humbug” to understand that he had
mistaken his lad. No! but here you have him as he first
flashed upon the intelligence of mankind the condensation of
the gases, or the identity of the five electricities.

After a lively summary of his career, and the jocular suggestion that, as the successor of Sir Humphry Davy, Far-a-day must be near-a-knight the article continues:--

The future Baronet is a very good little fellow ... playing a
fair fork over a leg of mutton, and devoid of any reluctance
to partake an old friend’s third bottle. We know of few things
more agreeable than a cigar and a bowl of punch (which he mixes
admirably) in the society of the unpretending ex-bookbinder....

Well, although Young got Broderip to write a sort of defence of
his master, and “Justice B----”--_mirabile dictu!_--got Hook
to print it in the _John Bull_, the current of public feeling
could not be stopped: REGINA spoke out--WILLIAM REX, as in duty
bound, followed--Melbourne apologised--and “Michael’s pension,
Michael’s pension” is all right.

In one of his note-books of this period is found the following entry:--

15 January, 1834.

Within the last week have observed twice that a slight
obscurity of the sight of my left eye has happened. It occurred
on reading the letters of a book held about fourteen inches
from the eye, being obscured as by a fog over a space about
half an inch in diameter. This space was a little to the right
and below the axes of the eye. Looking for the effect now and
other times, I cannot perceive it. I note this down that I may
hereafter trace the progress of the effect if it increases or
becomes more common.

Happily, the trouble did not recur; but the entry is characteristic of the habits of accuracy of the man. Loss of memory, unfortunately, early set in. There is actually a hint of this in the first of his letters to Abbott (p. 7), and references to the trouble and to dizziness in the head recur perpetually in his correspondence. Whenever these brain-troubles threatened, he was compelled to drop all work and seek rest and change of scene. He often ran down to Brighton, which he thought, however, a poor place. He constructed for himself a velocipede[15] on which to take exercise. Two or three times he went to Switzerland for a longer holiday, usually accompanied by his wife and her brother, George Barnard.

“Physically,” says Tyndall, “Faraday was below the middle size, well set, active, and with extraordinary animation of countenance. His head from forehead to back was so long that he had usually to bespeak his hats.” In youth his hair was brown, curling naturally; later in life it approached to white, and he always parted it down the middle. His voice was pleasant, his laugh was hearty, his manners when with young people, or when excited by success in the laboratory, were gay to boyishness. Indeed, until the end of the active period of his life he never lost the capacity for boyish delight, or for unbending in fun after the stress of severe labour.